Unabridged interview with Patrick (son of Dr. Sally Smith)

Speaker 1 True Story Media.

Speaker 1 Hello, it's Andrea. So, today we are bringing you the unabridged version of one of my favorite conversations that I had this season.
And this is with Patrick, who is Dr. Sally Smith's son.

Speaker 1 You know, the biggest surprise of this season was that I got the opportunity to interview Dr. Sally Smith, and it happened because of Patrick.
He reached reached out to me early on in our season.

Speaker 1 And so it was really fascinating to get to sit down and connect with Patrick and just talk to him more about who his mom actually is and what this whole experience has been like for his family.

Speaker 1 And of course, I also got to interview his mother, Dr. Sally Smith.
And we are going to be sharing the unabridged version of that conversation, but that one is going to be subscriber only.

Speaker 1 So if you want to listen to that, go ahead and check us out on Apple Podcasts or on Patreon. In the meantime, here is my conversation with Patrick.
Hello, I have exciting news.

Speaker 1 I am officially taking this show on the road next year. I'm going to be doing a series of Nobody Should Believe Me live shows next March.

Speaker 1 I will be in Los Angeles on March 7th at the Regent Theater. I'll be in my hometown, Seattle, at the Triple Door on March 18th.
Then I'm headed to New York City for a show at Sony Hall on March 25th.

Speaker 1 And I'll be wrapping up in Chicago on March 26th at The Den. Tickets for all shows are on sale now.
You can find a link in the show notes or on our website.

Speaker 1 We're going to have special guests, meet and greets, and more at these shows. We're going to have a great time.
So go get your tickets now. Hope to see you out there.
Hey, it's Andrea.

Speaker 1 It's come to my attention that some of you have been served programmatic ads for ICE on my show.

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Speaker 1 And if you do continue to hear them, please do let us know. In the meantime, I want it to be known that I do not support ICE.
I am the daughter of an immigrant. I stand with immigrants.

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Speaker 1 Well, it's so good to see you. So

Speaker 1 I just wanted to start with

Speaker 1 how did you find the podcast? And because you reached out to me, I got a voicemail from you. This was, gosh, this was a few months ago, probably now, a couple months ago.

Speaker 1 So how did you find the podcast and what compelled you to reach out?

Speaker 2 Yeah, at the time that the Netflix film came out that sort of launched this whole story into a more

Speaker 2 into the public discourse, a good friend of mine shared the podcast with me. And this was at a time when the dialogue was pretty one-sided about the whole case and

Speaker 2 about you know, sort of what my mom did, both both in her usual role and in this case specifically. So, um, and the podcast immediately stood out to me as

Speaker 2 specifically the episode of

Speaker 2 you and some of your guest hosts responding to the film that stood out to me as a really measured and

Speaker 2 critical take, as as in a lot of critical thinking, was applied to the claims made in the film. So,

Speaker 2 yeah, I mean, the work kind of spoke for itself.

Speaker 1 Oh, well, I really appreciate that. And,

Speaker 1 I mean, obviously,

Speaker 1 I, so

Speaker 1 I wanted to interview Dr. Sally Smith from the beginning of starting on this project, probably before that, because I'd read even about her in some other stories.

Speaker 1 And this was the interview that I thought I was never going to get this season.

Speaker 1 I just thought, I think I put in a request through the communications folks from Dawns Hopkins, but I was like, there's no way she is ever talking to the media again.

Speaker 1 You know, she did the one interview with New York Magazine and they just did her so dirty, in my opinion. And so I was shocked when I heard from you.

Speaker 1 And I mean,

Speaker 1 given how your mom's been treated in the media, I mean, did that feel risky, even reaching out to me?

Speaker 2 It felt really risky. I,

Speaker 2 at the time, was,

Speaker 2 I think we had received harassment online. We were concerned about

Speaker 2 people actually coming to her house. And,

Speaker 2 you know, we have that fear even now, my family does, about any sort of media

Speaker 2 contact.

Speaker 2 And so

Speaker 2 it took two to three weeks, I think, before I even started to consider the idea of reaching out to you all.

Speaker 2 The

Speaker 2 yeah, the

Speaker 2 I don't know what else to say beyond that, just that

Speaker 2 it was

Speaker 2 after I had

Speaker 2 started to

Speaker 2 see some of your further coverage on the case and then also looking into your coverage of past medical child abuse cases that

Speaker 2 knowing what my mother had been through with other interviews, I really started to think that this was a really rare chance to talk to someone who would

Speaker 2 really consider all the aspects of the story and not simply the parts that can be kind of sensationalized.

Speaker 1 Yeah, absolutely. And I mean, I was super...
honored to hear from you guys. And I'm really interested to know,

Speaker 1 I assume, you know, you and I have been talking back and forth for a couple of months and I've had a kind of series of conversations. And

Speaker 1 yeah, I mean, I think, you know, I feel sort of, I think we, we feel a bit of a bond because there's just so few people that it seems like are understanding what's happening here.

Speaker 1 And it can make you feel like you're losing your mind a little bit.

Speaker 1 And I really appreciated being able to have that connection with you.

Speaker 1 And I'm assuming that it took some convincing to get your mom to be open to the idea of talking to a podcaster. And I mean, I'm curious what you can tell me about how those conversations went.

Speaker 2 I didn't bring up the idea of my mother talking to the podcast until after you and I had had a few phone calls. I think we'd had two phone calls at the point that I

Speaker 2 opened the idea up to her. And

Speaker 2 she was

Speaker 2 really hesitant at first, I think, you know, rightfully so.

Speaker 2 And it was only after I shared

Speaker 2 podcasts with her that had discussions with Carol Jenny and with sort of other people in the field that she really looks up to and respects and

Speaker 2 that have gone through a similar experience as she has.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 I am, you know, I'm kind of a podcast junkie, or at least I was. I think this

Speaker 2 last

Speaker 2 few months has kind of broken my brain a little bit and kind of changed my ability to consume anything. And so

Speaker 2 So I'd say

Speaker 2 at least used to be. And

Speaker 2 I

Speaker 2 remember talking to my mom and telling her, like, you know, I've listened to a lot of different shows. And I said, like, this one is

Speaker 2 different, or at least it's in, you know, the

Speaker 2 high tier of like doing your homework and

Speaker 2 documenting

Speaker 2 your sources and claims.

Speaker 2 And it was through that combination of sort of my,

Speaker 2 I guess, experienced consuming of podcasting and my my take on it to her plus um her just listening to some of those curated episodes and getting a sense of the kind of work that you all do yeah

Speaker 1 um

Speaker 1 say a little bit more about what you just said when you said that these last few months have broken your brain a little bit when it comes to consuming media because

Speaker 1 i think i i i think I think I'm going through something similar. So

Speaker 1 tell me what you mean when you say that.

Speaker 2 Well,

Speaker 2 it has been a gradual process that has kind of

Speaker 2 worn us down, us being

Speaker 2 my mom and her family.

Speaker 2 This all started

Speaker 2 a few, well, you know, it started in what, July or so, or this started in the summer when the film came out. And

Speaker 2 at the time, I was working really on the other side of the world in a pretty remote area. And so,

Speaker 2 and doing a job where I actually used to listen to podcasts a lot, like one, you know, a lot of people do, just like one headphone in.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 I would go out into this, when I would go out for a day of work, I'd be out of cell range and

Speaker 2 I

Speaker 2 would just have these almost like anxiety attacks during work thinking about, you you know, I knew that my mom was being doxxed, harassed, identified, that people were talking about coming to her house and burning it down or hurting her.

Speaker 2 And that was,

Speaker 2 I think that the wires kind of get crossed in your brain when you're worrying about something that's that intense.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 I listened to, you know, various

Speaker 2 hot take episodes on the film just to see what people were saying. And it was just one after the other, people saying, like, this this woman deserves to anything from go to jail to die.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 yeah, it created, I think, like, the association in my brain is now with a fair amount of stress with any sort of coverage of this

Speaker 2 case. And then also, sort of the format of podcasting has been kind of

Speaker 2 distorted for me now. But

Speaker 1 yeah,

Speaker 1 yeah, I can, I can see that. And I think, you know,

Speaker 1 it's so personal and visceral for you. I think this was what, you know, and it's, it's on such a more muted level because I think there are these varying, you know, degrees here where like

Speaker 1 I remember what it felt like to see that My Kicks and Bog piece in the paper and in our, you know, in our local paper and on our local TV station.

Speaker 1 And that was a national story, but I mean, it's not, not the level of tens of millions of people watching a

Speaker 1 Netflix film and then sort of this whole cottage industry of people, you know, covering that case because of that. I mean, obviously I'm included there, but,

Speaker 1 you know, I just remember feeling like, yeah, like this really deep sense of betrayal and,

Speaker 1 you know, just injustice at how wrong they'd gotten it. And it was a very similar thing to what, you know, form formula-wise to what's happened to your mom, where they picked on the doctor and

Speaker 1 she got harassed. She got, you you know, a ton of blowback.
Really, reputation got dragged for the mud. They dug up a few other families that were mad at her and just used the same exact formula.

Speaker 1 And could she say anything? Nope, because nobody had signed a HIPAA release. So, you know, and in that case, like, I knew about that case.

Speaker 1 I feel very strongly that that doctor's actions probably saved my niece's life. And to watch her go through that was totally devastating.
And so

Speaker 1 you've been through that, but like amplified by, you know,

Speaker 1 a huge factor in terms of that being your mom, who's the person directly being criticized. And

Speaker 1 just like, yeah, I mean, I, the online vitriol against her, and it sounds like some of which is translated into real life is like nothing I've

Speaker 1 like almost like nothing I've ever seen.

Speaker 1 Um, so I'm just, I, I really, yeah, I just, I really

Speaker 1 feel for you. Um, so I want to just back up.

Speaker 1 Um,

Speaker 1 assuming that you watched the movie.

Speaker 2 Yes, I did.

Speaker 1 I mean, what was your,

Speaker 1 did you know much about it going in?

Speaker 1 Were you,

Speaker 1 I mean, what, yeah, what was just, what was your experience of watching the movie?

Speaker 2 Well,

Speaker 2 you know, I was aware that this case had happened, obviously.

Speaker 2 The pieces had been written in the Sarasota Herald Tribune before, and those had prompted some questions from me to my mom about, like,

Speaker 2 I mean,

Speaker 2 starting from the point of, you know, are you doing okay?

Speaker 2 This was before

Speaker 2 it had been picked up by Netflix, but

Speaker 2 I think

Speaker 2 both because of how seriously my mother takes the sort of privacy of this whole topic, and

Speaker 2 I think just the nature of our relationship and how we can discuss things.

Speaker 2 I have always kind of understood that, you know, I have to respect that boundary as something that she can't talk about.

Speaker 2 And so, up to the point of the film being released,

Speaker 2 I had no idea who, you know,

Speaker 2 any of the details of the case or who the family was,

Speaker 2 though

Speaker 2 I was roughly aware of sort of the

Speaker 2 medical child abuse

Speaker 2 analysis that she had done, and

Speaker 2 that this was

Speaker 2 one of the more alarming cases that she had encountered in her career.

Speaker 2 So

Speaker 2 that was the extent of what I knew about the case before the film came out.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 just knowing

Speaker 2 how my mom sort of approaches like the critical thinking and

Speaker 2 sort of like the scientific aspect of her work, I could pretty quickly see the way that the film was

Speaker 2 edited and the way that they presented their story, that it was really not presenting it from that

Speaker 2 with that kind of frame of mind.

Speaker 2 But I did still kind of, I tried to maintain some respect for that,

Speaker 2 the sort of privacy that everybody in these cases deserves, the families, you know, most of all, and the children that are affected.

Speaker 1 Yeah, you know, it's really, I have to say,

Speaker 1 it's striking to hear you say that. And

Speaker 1 having spoken to your mom, hearing her talk about it that same way, and even seeing,

Speaker 1 you know, the back and forth, she, you know, sent me the email email with Liz Boyd, who's the fact checker for New York Magazine, and

Speaker 1 seeing how seriously she takes the privacy of the families as a whole, and specifically, of course, of the kids.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 that, to me, has been one of the points of

Speaker 1 real dissonance.

Speaker 1 in watching the actions of the people who are right now positioning themselves as Maya's advocates, as Maya Kowalski's advocates, Jack Kowalski, her father, and Gregory Anderson, the lead attorney,

Speaker 1 their actions have demolished any hope that this young woman ever has of privacy and

Speaker 1 have

Speaker 1 put her and her brother in a position to relive their worst traumas over and over and over again.

Speaker 1 for their entire teenage years and going forward to however, who knows how long, because there's this legal case is nowhere near from over.

Speaker 1 And even when that's over, the reverberations of it have been their defining years.

Speaker 1 And to see that behavior contrasted with the medical professionals involved,

Speaker 1 even understanding that there's like a legal

Speaker 1 issue of HIPAA and all that stuff, but just like

Speaker 1 I can tell that's something that your mom really takes seriously just as a value. And

Speaker 1 to look at that in contrast to the way that this has been turned by the other side, by the plaintiff side, into a pop culture story is really

Speaker 1 dissonant to say the least.

Speaker 1 So, yeah,

Speaker 1 I can see that. So if we can just like back up from the whole recent events, I'd love to know just

Speaker 1 what your mom was like as a mom growing up, you know,

Speaker 1 how you know her.

Speaker 2 Well, I think that everyone who

Speaker 2 in our sort of nuclear family, as well as just everyone in her life,

Speaker 2 would say she's like a caretaker personality type, if that makes sense.

Speaker 2 She,

Speaker 2 I think,

Speaker 2 to the point that it like, you you know, irritates

Speaker 2 me and my sibling, you know, and if we ask my mom what she wants to do, where she wants to go out to eat or something, it's like she is just solely focused on like what other, what would make other people happy.

Speaker 2 And I have

Speaker 2 You know, I think that everybody thinks that their mother is special, but like I

Speaker 2 truly like think that

Speaker 2 the amount of like happiness she created in our lives when we were young kids is like this kind of,

Speaker 2 I mean, it just

Speaker 2 is hard to describe. And

Speaker 2 she was this,

Speaker 2 she's, um,

Speaker 2 she's warm, she's not stern, she's like,

Speaker 2 um,

Speaker 2 just pays attention to

Speaker 2 needs that you don't really realize that you have in the moment and then

Speaker 2 um but then at the same time growing up with her like my sister and i were i think aware from like

Speaker 2 relatively early age the sort of work that she did

Speaker 2 and

Speaker 2 so

Speaker 2 it was interesting to

Speaker 2 grow up in her household and

Speaker 2 in all of our one-on-one interactions or interactions as a family, she's just, she's

Speaker 2 warm and caring. And then she has to do this job where you have to actually kind of turn off part of your,

Speaker 2 I think, the emotion parts of your brain.

Speaker 2 She

Speaker 2 would just work these like late hours into the night.

Speaker 2 Remember our dinner or our dining table not being a dining table. Instead, it was covered in

Speaker 2 like that was her office that she would work in.

Speaker 2 And I just remember her working there into the, like late at night and working on these topics that are just really brutally serious, you know, like blood in a kid's urine or like a bizarre fracture that nobody can explain that

Speaker 2 to anybody in

Speaker 2 anybody in the everyday society would think that a kid had like, you know, fallen two stories out of a building or something. But in fact, it's related to

Speaker 2 a parent that couldn't control their emotions. I think a lot of people have, I've actually seen this speculation about like clips taken from her deposition where she seems robotic or something.
And

Speaker 2 I mean,

Speaker 2 it's weird to see that so prominently displayed when it's such a tiny part of

Speaker 2 her day-to-day life and not a part of her personality. It's more that I think you have to have this ability to separate your

Speaker 2 warmth and caring that would motivate you to be be a pediatrician, you know, from a job that forces you to face some of the darkest parts of human nature.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I mean, that's so well said. And it, it is, it's a quality that I feel like, you know, there's, there's two other child abuse pediatricians that I've gotten to know pretty well, Dr.

Speaker 1 Carl Jenny and then Dr. Jamie Kaufman, who we've had on the show a bunch.
And I mean, I think it's a real, like there is just a real specific quality. Again, it's that, that

Speaker 1 not very many people have.

Speaker 1 I mean, I think it's just one of those jobs you either sort of are designed for or not, where you have, you know, the ability to like, yeah, to look that the, yeah, the darkest element that like most of us couldn't would be haunted by a day in that job, you know, let alone decades.

Speaker 1 And yes, your mom cracked us all up when she said that her sister called her before she went down to testify and reminded her about her resting bitch face.

Speaker 1 And that just cracked me up because I also, yeah, have, have seen some of that commentary.

Speaker 1 And, you know, number one, she's giving a deposition to Gregory Anderson, you know, for many, many hours on the stand.

Speaker 1 And I do not want to know what my face would look like if I had to be giving him a deposition for 20 minutes. But,

Speaker 1 you know, yeah, we have this real, I mean, there's some real misogyny here that like, if a woman has a serious look on her face, a woman who's in a serious role, who's on the stand, like, I don't know what people exactly want her face to look like under those those circumstances because it would be deranged if she was smiling during that.

Speaker 1 But yeah, I mean, we, we do, we do judge women that way. And, um,

Speaker 1 and yeah, I mean, I think that, that that sort of selective editing that happened in the film in particular was, uh, was pretty notable.

Speaker 1 I'm interested to know when you said, you know, I think it's always really funny to

Speaker 1 like ask kids what they think their parents do for a living. Um, I famously told someone when they asked me what my dad did for a living that he didn't actually do much.

Speaker 1 He just told other people what to do,

Speaker 1 which, you know, I kind of stand by that. I'm kidding.

Speaker 1 But

Speaker 1 like, did you, like, with that's obviously like, you know, there's obviously got to be like a lot of sort of age-appropriate moments of explaining that kind of work.

Speaker 1 Like, do you, do you remember like what,

Speaker 1 you know, like.

Speaker 1 Do you remember kind of what the process of understanding what your mom did for a living was like?

Speaker 2 So I have been trying trying to reconstruct this

Speaker 2 recently. I mean, since this all has been thrust so fully into under a spotlight.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 I think the point where I knew where she worked was because when I got old enough to notice the times when she had to leave at weird hours, you know, and like,

Speaker 2 you know, if she wasn't there for dinner and you started to ask, like, where's mom? You know, um, and my dad would, would just tell us, like, oh, she had to go to child protection team.

Speaker 2 And it was like a word, you know, like when you're a kid, sometimes words mash together. And you say, child protection team, like that, you think it's like one word.

Speaker 1 It's like a place. Yeah.

Speaker 2 Yeah, exactly. Yeah.
It's, it's a name, you know, it's like Publix or something.

Speaker 2 So that was when I kind of became aware of it. And then it must have been, you know, that would have been like five or six years old.

Speaker 2 And then I started to put together that those those words are separate and mean something. And then

Speaker 2 I remember,

Speaker 2 I must have been around 10

Speaker 2 or

Speaker 2 maybe 9 or 10. And I remember asking my sister about a phone call that my mom had had to take.
And I didn't understand some of the words that she said.

Speaker 2 You know, I mean, like, she would take these calls privately, but sometimes, you know, you overhear snippets. And I asked my sister what blood in the stool meant,

Speaker 2 and

Speaker 2 my sister, who's you know, uh, close to three years older than me, I think had you know, picked up more than I could and told me that,

Speaker 2 you know, that

Speaker 2 just rather matter of fact that that's what happens when

Speaker 2 someone's been beaten to the point that they're bleeding inside. And

Speaker 2 then they and then it all kind of clicked, you know, what her job was.

Speaker 2 And so,

Speaker 2 yeah, and

Speaker 2 my sister listens to this. I don't even know if she remembers that, but

Speaker 2 that was a moment where I knew what my mom did. And then from that point forward, it's been pretty matter of fact.
When people ask what my mom does, I think just because of the

Speaker 2 seriousness. the seriousness with which she does her job and um and i think the conviction that she is like displays that like this is the right,

Speaker 2 you know, that it's the right thing for her to do with her life is to protect kids. And

Speaker 2 so I've actually for years been quite proud when people ask, like, what do your parents do? I'm like, oh, my mom works for child protective services. And

Speaker 2 basically I tell people, yeah, you know, like.

Speaker 2 Have you ever thought about like there must be someone out there who has to medically assess a kid after they've been abused? And they're usually like, oh yeah, I guess that that does make sense.

Speaker 2 That's that's a thing that has to be done i'm like yeah well that's what uh

Speaker 2 that's what my mom does

Speaker 1 yeah i mean i

Speaker 1 would imagine that you're deeply proud of your mom

Speaker 2 yeah um

Speaker 2 yeah i think everybody is proud of their parents you know for the job that they do but I don't know if that's true.

Speaker 1 I don't know if that's true once you get to adulthood. I think as a child, you idolize your parents, but I mean, you are just, you're,

Speaker 1 I think, early 30s, right?

Speaker 2 I mean, you're, you are, you are an adult.

Speaker 1 So like the fact that I think, I think, um, and I know I'm a parent, I have two little kids. And

Speaker 1 I think if your kids admire you by the, if they still admire you, if they admire you when they're kids, no big deal, you're a god in their world. They don't have any reference points.

Speaker 1 But if they admire you still when they're in their 30s, then I think that that says you've done a really good job as a parent, to be, to be totally frank.

Speaker 1 I think most people who most people have figured out that they're,

Speaker 1 you know, people figure out that their parents are human beings as they're growing up.

Speaker 1 So I think actually that's not always the, that's not even maybe frequently the case that people are still really proud of their parents by the time they're adults.

Speaker 2 I'll say this about sort of my adult, my respect for her and everything she does now that I'm an adult is

Speaker 2 I'm a my job is that I'm a scientist and i am motivated by our sort of a family saying which isn't unique to our family but just that they they're in the typical stiff upper lip sort of midwest

Speaker 2 i don't know protestant vibe of um from those who have much much is expected and um

Speaker 2 and I actually, it's funny, as a kid, I rolled my eyes at that and now I kind of believe it. And I think that my,

Speaker 2 you know, I became a scientist because I i wanted to and i'm still striving toward this i haven't achieved it yet i want to do something that um that protects the environment in a way that um will

Speaker 2 you know benefit the kids that i hope to have and and the you know future generations and and i and i think that that when i was a teenager um

Speaker 2 the same I had the same sort of emotional motivation in that I actually wanted to be a pediatrician.

Speaker 2 I thought about it really seriously to the point that I volunteered at a children's hospital. And

Speaker 2 I realized I couldn't hack it. Like I couldn't deal with

Speaker 2 seeing kids struggling with some of the things that they were dealing with. And

Speaker 2 so in that sense, I can't be anything but proud of her because

Speaker 2 I think of it like she takes this

Speaker 2 same motivation that all of us have in our family and does it in a way that not everyone can handle, you know, protecting kids from something as

Speaker 2 hard to.

Speaker 2 It's, I don't, like, I don't ever want to demonize any parents who are

Speaker 2 in these situations where they have to deal with, you know, a case plan and stuff. But so I'm not, I don't, I would never call any of this like

Speaker 2 heyness or anything like that. But, you know, it's

Speaker 2 you're,

Speaker 2 I think she does a job that requires this

Speaker 2 level of like poise and focus on what is really important, which is the welfare of kids,

Speaker 2 with a discipline that I can't replicate, you know, and I've tried. And so that's a big part of why I continue to just deeply respect the work that she does.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I mean, you know, it's,

Speaker 1 I think

Speaker 1 part of what is going on here in this discourse is,

Speaker 1 you know, something that I've really observed with my own work over the last few years as I've gotten into, you know, work related to child abuse is that, and I by no means could ever do the job that your mom does.

Speaker 1 Like, I, I, I think I've, I've built up a tolerance for the work that I do, but I,

Speaker 1 that to me would be to see that kind of suffering in children to see, and yeah, I mean, I really appreciate that you are not using that kind of language that demonizes people who abuse their children, because I think that like that is not necessarily helpful, but those

Speaker 1 acts are certainly heinous, right?

Speaker 1 And to understand

Speaker 1 that

Speaker 1 people are capable of that.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 to really have to look that in the face is hard. It's hard to think of

Speaker 1 what people are capable of. And that's something that I encounter all the time with that just disbelief about specifically the kind of abuse we talk about.

Speaker 1 But I think it's, you know, with medical child abuse, but I think it's, it's true of all child abuse where

Speaker 1 people don't want to look at it. And I think sometimes we resent people that make us look at it.
And I think that's part of, certainly not the whole explanation, but I think that's part of what

Speaker 1 part of the sort of constellation of things that came together against your mom.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 I think

Speaker 1 people that are willing to look at it are so brave.

Speaker 1 I got a message from someone

Speaker 1 and I can't remember, it was either about some comment I'd made about your mom or some comment I'd made about or some interview with Dr. Kaufman or just kind of about child abuse pediatricians.

Speaker 1 And they said to me,

Speaker 1 you know, you should really look at whether or not those people are feeling pressure to come up with a lot of positive findings so that they can keep their jobs. And I just thought,

Speaker 1 do you live in a world where so few children are abused that someone has to drum up cases? Like, this is not a job anyone wants to exist. It's a job that has to exist.

Speaker 1 And there are those people that are brave enough to do it. And I just, like, I just was like,

Speaker 1 I just thought that's, that's amazing to me that someone could sort of do the math in that way, I guess, you know?

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Speaker 1 Yeah, I mean, you, so you come from actually like a line of medical professionals. So your, your grandfather was a, was a neurosurgeon, is that right?

Speaker 2 That's right.

Speaker 1 Yeah. So, um, yeah, so that's, I, my grandfather actually was a surgeon as well.
So, um, yeah, so I was gonna, I was gonna ask you if you considered that a career, but you did answer that already. Um,

Speaker 1 yeah, so uh, I'd love if you could just sort of tell us a little bit more about what your mom is like as a family person.

Speaker 1 I know, and again, if you don't want to say this, I think she might have mentioned it, but I know you have a nephew. Like, what is your mom like as a grandma?

Speaker 2 Um,

Speaker 2 my

Speaker 2 mom, um,

Speaker 2 like, she

Speaker 2 restructured her, you know, her work schedule around

Speaker 2 being able to spend weekly time with him, which, you know, I'm immensely jealous of in some ways. I live far away from my nephew and I wish I could see him every week.

Speaker 2 But

Speaker 2 she,

Speaker 2 I mean, she dedicates herself to these like, you know, elaborate costumes after he watches a Pixar film and wants to,

Speaker 2 you know,

Speaker 2 play a,

Speaker 2 you know, play a lead character with grandma there to, you know, be the sidekick.

Speaker 2 She.

Speaker 1 Okay, so is your mom crafty? Is she like, is she a crafty mom?

Speaker 2 My mom is really crafty. She,

Speaker 2 I think she made my sister a full dolphin costume when my sister was like four or five,

Speaker 2 like with, you know, her

Speaker 2 combination of sewing and probably plastering and stuff. I mean, she's,

Speaker 2 yeah, I think she's actually getting to relive this really sort of glorious first few years of, you know, caring for a kid during their first few years when they're like, immensely curious and exploratory and

Speaker 2 but you know need a need a guiding hand so they don't go you know jumping into a lake full of alligators or something like she um

Speaker 2 yeah I mean I the

Speaker 2 um

Speaker 2 she's just like sort of effortlessly dedicated to that to that kid to the point that like I think my

Speaker 2 my sister and her brother-in-law or my brother-in-law who you know one of my very best friends there like I think they actually have to like sometimes be like we need, we need, we need a day without grandma, you know?

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 yeah,

Speaker 2 you know, the

Speaker 2 kids at that age have this like immense energy and fixation on the same topics over and over and over again.

Speaker 2 And like she is just sort of tirelessly enthusiastic about all the same things that he's enthusiastic about. And so

Speaker 2 yeah, I mean, it's really nice to have that reminder of how to be a parent to a young kid when I'm approaching that, you know, stage in my life where we're hoping to have kids. And so,

Speaker 2 yeah, just as a

Speaker 2 sort of a perfect little role model reminder of

Speaker 2 how you do that.

Speaker 1 That's amazing. I feel like

Speaker 1 My mom was also a prolific and amazing maker of Halloween costumes. And so I have a five-year-old and an 18-month-old.
And, you know, Halloween just happened as we're talking.

Speaker 1 And I had the realization to myself that that was a piece of my childhood I would probably not be reliving because I was like, oh, I, you know, sorry, kid, you're probably getting Halloween costumes from Amazon because I, the time it takes to put together like the idea that your mom was doing this job and was the elaborate Halloween costume maker.

Speaker 1 I mean, that's, that's some, that's some gold metal parenting right there. Um, but yeah, I mean, I, I really like, I can just see like on your face when you're talking about your mom, like,

Speaker 1 you know,

Speaker 1 I think it's such a gift, right, to have parents like that and to be at this stage in your life when you're becoming a parent yourself or thinking about becoming a parent like that.

Speaker 1 You're really lucky if you get to look at your parents and being like, oh, they, they're, they're showing, they're modeling good. Like, I want to be like them.

Speaker 2 Yeah. Yeah.
And, and I think that she

Speaker 2 continues to be a role model in other, in other ways and how you have adult relationships.

Speaker 1 Yeah. I mean, I think something that struck me about your mom, you know, I was fortunate enough to spend like, you know, we spent like half a day together.

Speaker 1 And I, I think one of the things that really struck me

Speaker 1 was

Speaker 1 she doesn't seem bitter about what's happened. I think she seems justifiably

Speaker 1 angry about,

Speaker 1 but it, but it seems to me that she's more angry about about the effects she knows it's going to have. Not,

Speaker 1 it doesn't actually sound like she's taken it.

Speaker 1 I don't know what, like, not that she hasn't taken it personally, but she doesn't have this sort of like, I mean, if I had been made the villain of a Netflix movie that tens of millions of people saw and dealt with half of the things she's dealt with, I would feel

Speaker 1 pretty angry and bitter and personally aggrieved. And I didn't see that with her.
And

Speaker 1 I was sort of amazed by that. I just thought, like, how could you go through this kind of, you know, this is this kind of public experience is like the stuff of nightmares.
And

Speaker 1 I really didn't see evidence of that.

Speaker 2 Well, I think part of what keeps her perspective stable

Speaker 2 is that

Speaker 2 Her work has always been in and around Pinellas County. There have been various

Speaker 2 stories that try to tally up how many cases

Speaker 2 she has dealt with,

Speaker 2 somewhere around like 3,000 cases. And

Speaker 2 people love to,

Speaker 2 certain angry internet groups love to say that, well, that's like 3,000 people that have had their family torn apart.

Speaker 2 And I can tell you that probably part of the reason why she's not bitter is because she's had

Speaker 2 a lot of kids reach out to her who have grown up and said,

Speaker 2 you know, I,

Speaker 2 you know, what can you say, but like,

Speaker 2 thanks for probably saving my life.

Speaker 2 And,

Speaker 2 you know, I think with that in mind, I think

Speaker 2 this is a small blip relative to all the times that she's heard, you know,

Speaker 2 you know, young adults, people who are like finally out on their own and have gotten free of some sort of abusive or neglectful situation, um,

Speaker 2 and tell her that, you know, that they actually have some sort of future

Speaker 2 because of that intervention. Um,

Speaker 2 so

Speaker 2 I'm, you know, I'm not surprised that she, um,

Speaker 2 you know, I sure, I bet there's a lot of,

Speaker 2 you know,

Speaker 2 just negative feelings toward Greg Anderson, people that took the two.

Speaker 1 I think she can probably join the club there.

Speaker 2 Yeah, sorry.

Speaker 2 You know, I think there's

Speaker 2 that's the only people that she feels negatively towards. I mean,

Speaker 2 you know, as much as in my discussions with her since that film came out, like, we've,

Speaker 2 I'm always, I try to be really respectful of, like I said, of like the families, the struggle that the family has gone through. Like, I mean, I can't imagine growing up

Speaker 2 with this hanging over your head or dealing with this situation, but like, I think like every conversation I have with my mom, even after

Speaker 2 being dragged through the mud by, you know, a Netflix film, like I,

Speaker 2 she

Speaker 2 ends those conversations talking about like

Speaker 2 her worry about what those kids will go through as they become young adults.

Speaker 2 And I'm and I'm not surprised that that's how she ends the conversation because that's like what her motivation has always been.

Speaker 1 I really thought, you know, I have been, as I've been metabolizing this conversation for the last week and a half, I just thought like, you know, there's something to be said about like true character being like, you're going to do the right thing,

Speaker 1 even if everyone hates you for it. And you're going to stand by those actions because you know it was the right thing.
And that's really what I got from your mom.

Speaker 1 And like, that is, I'm like, okay, I, I mean, I feel like you're honestly, like, I'm not like, I, your mom is a role model for me now. I mean, I just, I, like, I, I admire her so much.

Speaker 1 And I think, like, whatever,

Speaker 1 you know, I say, I think sometimes people have

Speaker 1 taken her certainty about her, what her work is to be arrogance. And I did not

Speaker 1 talking to her for three hours. I've had numerous conversations with her since then.
Like, I, I don't, I don't see it. And I mean, I, I'm also from a medical family.

Speaker 1 Like, I'm, I'm a woman who's gone to the doctor many times. Like, I understand doctors can be extremely arrogant.
Like, we, it's not, it's not that that, that archetype doesn't exist, but I,

Speaker 1 I don't, I think her certainty is that she believes in the facts and she believes in her training and

Speaker 1 that she has a great conviction about what her work means. I mean, that's, that's, that's what I, that's what I observe.
She didn't, she didn't seem real,

Speaker 1 I don't know, I guess it's just so strong. She didn't seem defensive.
She didn't seem

Speaker 1 like she wanted to self-aggrandize in any way or like, which I mean, I think after that kind of, you know, internet

Speaker 1 experience, like, you know, or her experience of harassment,

Speaker 1 I keep saying internet, but it's not just been the internet. I mean,

Speaker 1 there's been, you know, there are police reports because of people threatening to show up at the clinic where she works and people calling and calling and calling the clinic. And she's,

Speaker 1 when she told us about those experiences and, you know, talking about Viviana Graham, who's one of the moms from the film who talked about sending her this Christmas card every year. And

Speaker 1 she, you know,

Speaker 1 she was like, they send it to my pediatric practice.

Speaker 1 Your mom's always had the work of being the CPT and then being just a pediatrician, like a, you know, regular seeing kids, healthy kids and all that.

Speaker 1 And she really resents people sending that to her office there because then her coworkers have to deal with it. And that's, that's what she talked about.
She didn't say,

Speaker 1 and I'm sure she is mad. She's rightfully mad.
I'm not trying to paint her as a saint that has no, but, you know, whatever. I'm not, but I just, I was very struck by that.

Speaker 1 Yeah, she's like, she doesn't, she also like, I think she seems to accept.

Speaker 1 the nature of her job and the way that that's going to make people angry and doesn't want that spilling out over onto her coworkers that are working in a pediatric's office. And

Speaker 1 yeah,

Speaker 1 I mean,

Speaker 1 I feel like in some ways this has probably been harder emotionally on you

Speaker 1 in a lot of ways, just because, I mean,

Speaker 1 I can't imagine watching someone do this to my mom. I mean, I'm very close with my mom also, and I really,

Speaker 1 I mean, this, like, how is this? You talked a little bit about this already, but I mean, what, this must have taken such a toll on you.

Speaker 2 Well, you know,

Speaker 2 I have worried over the last six months or so

Speaker 2 about how this has

Speaker 2 actually sort of cascaded out from me to affect,

Speaker 2 you know, my wife. I think she's had to deal with me at a time when I'm, you know, pretty emotionally

Speaker 2 tightly wound.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 I,

Speaker 2 you know, for a few months when we were unsure of like how big this

Speaker 2 Netflix-funded wave of anger would get, I was worried about, you know,

Speaker 2 arson at her house. I woke up

Speaker 2 I can't count how many times I've woken up from dreams where

Speaker 2 either I'm there or someone calls me and tells me that she's been killed and I,

Speaker 2 you know, wake up and throw up.

Speaker 2 Yeah, I mean, it's

Speaker 2 it's gotten to the point where I,

Speaker 2 and I mean, you know, I like it. Fortunately, it's died down a bit, but stupid things like

Speaker 2 people found the, you know, my wedding album on Facebook and started posting comments about like that I was lucky to get away from my monster of a mother.

Speaker 2 You know, like, it's just things like this where you, um,

Speaker 2 and again, I want to make clear: like, I'm not compared, I'm not minimizing the struggle that I think that Maya and Kyle have been through.

Speaker 2 Like, it's it's a nightmare that they've lived through, and mine doesn't add up to that, you know, but

Speaker 2 um,

Speaker 2 but it just

Speaker 2 it's been a,

Speaker 2 it's weird to have that sort of just online mob

Speaker 2 that takes a certain glee in

Speaker 2 just like a small twisting of the knife every

Speaker 2 now and then at an unsuspecting time. And to the to the point that, you know, you start to mentally break a bit.
You're like, how long does this go on?

Speaker 2 Does this ever really end?

Speaker 2 But

Speaker 2 yeah,

Speaker 2 it

Speaker 2 has,

Speaker 2 yeah, certainly led to a lot of conversations about, you know, what sort of

Speaker 2 therapy needs to happen, how, what is a way to deal with

Speaker 2 the

Speaker 2 the stress and the idea of a sort of constant, potentially violent threat.

Speaker 2 But

Speaker 2 yeah,

Speaker 2 and

Speaker 2 I mean, credit to my mom. I think she has played, as she's dealing with all of this herself, she has been one of the people that I've leaned on of like, how to,

Speaker 2 how do I

Speaker 2 handle this,

Speaker 2 these emotions,

Speaker 2 these feelings of

Speaker 2 almost like a fight-or-flight, you know,

Speaker 2 lizard brain reaction to it all.

Speaker 2 So,

Speaker 2 yeah, I mean, I don't know.

Speaker 2 I don't ever want to make it seem like I'm

Speaker 2 quantifying whatever I've gone through as being on the same scale as either my mom or the

Speaker 2 Kwalski family.

Speaker 2 Everyone's been through a pretty awful experience.

Speaker 2 But

Speaker 2 yeah,

Speaker 2 it does really make me worry for humanity that like this seems to be an activity that a lot of people enjoy doing is like taking a movie, because it really is a movie, and thinking that that represents.

Speaker 1 You may have noticed we do not refer to it as a documentary on the show.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 they take that and see it as a call to action. You know, there's

Speaker 2 it's getting sort of dangerously close to some sort of vigilante justice

Speaker 2 that

Speaker 2 is not what a liberal democratic society is built on.

Speaker 1 Yeah, no, I, you know, and I appreciate like, as you've mentioned several times, you know, and of course,

Speaker 1 you know, this has been an interesting couple of months for me because I, nothing like anything that you're, you know, but like, I'm like, okay, we're officially avoiding Googling our name these days,

Speaker 1 you know, and like being aware that some people have these feelings about, me and that think I'm really doing something awful.

Speaker 1 And,

Speaker 1 you know,

Speaker 1 I think

Speaker 1 that it is, it's sort of, it's confusing. And I, also the idea that I

Speaker 1 am against Maya and Kyle. To be totally frank,

Speaker 1 my opinion of Jack Kowalski, as I've watched the trial, as I've learned all of these things, as I've seen these communications that he was part of, as I, you know,

Speaker 1 my opinion of him, better not said. But the kids,

Speaker 1 I am so worried about the kids, and I am not against them.

Speaker 1 If all of this money were going to that, I mean, the amount of money is ludicrous, but if it was going to Maya and Kyle and Jack and Gregory Anderson were getting none of it, I think I would actually feel quite a bit differently.

Speaker 1 But

Speaker 1 I think your mom saved Maya's life.

Speaker 1 That's the only conclusion I can come to after having read

Speaker 1 all of this, all the medications, Beada's communications. This was not going in a good direction.
It wasn't. It's so parallel to something like the Olivia Gant case or the Danita Tuck case.

Speaker 1 I don't know what the people who are detractors of

Speaker 1 what I'm saying,

Speaker 1 pointing out those things.

Speaker 1 I don't know what they think was going to happen if she was allowed to leave the hospital.

Speaker 1 And if they had let them leave the hospital and she died, what would they be saying about the hospital and your mom then?

Speaker 1 And I think it's people's

Speaker 1 either don't know the truth or absolute refusal to grasp that what was at stake. And

Speaker 1 I don't think it's good for Maya and Jack to believe that a bunch of people were in a conspiracy out to get them.

Speaker 1 And I don't think it's good for Maya to believe that she's this sick girl that's not capable, et cetera, et cetera. I don't think any of those things are good.

Speaker 1 And I don't think that a six plus year revenge journey is doing anyone any good. So it's like you can hold compassion for the kids, especially, and for what the family's been through.

Speaker 1 And the fact of having to experience your mother's death by suicide is horrible. You can hold compassion for all of that and still acknowledge the truth of the case.

Speaker 1 Like those things are not mutually exclusive. And I would argue that you're not, it's no favor to these kids not to acknowledge that.

Speaker 2 Well, and to your point about

Speaker 2 the

Speaker 2 conspiracy side of it all, you know, I think that

Speaker 2 there have been

Speaker 2 sort of, there have been pretty dubious constellations made out of

Speaker 2 the

Speaker 2 individual points in this case and people sort of drawing patterns,

Speaker 2 for instance, about like some sort of quota that like a CPS. you know, medical director has or something like that.
I mean, I can tell you, if there's, if there's any,

Speaker 2 if there's any logic to this, let's just walk through this. So I, as an adult, as, as you've said, I, I have

Speaker 2 sort of the,

Speaker 2 separate from the just the deep love I have for my mother, I have a deep respect for the work that she does. And

Speaker 2 that is

Speaker 2 partfully, it is partly born out of like when I was, you know, a teenager and like, I just remember like being, I was, I was playing soccer at, you know, a fairly competitive level and like often,

Speaker 2 or maybe not often, but there was, there were no shortage of times where she would miss a game or something. And it was because I would learn later, like she

Speaker 2 was, you know, doing a medical exam for a kid who had been, had had their skull cracked by their, by their parent or who had.

Speaker 2 you know, in rare cases, you know, dealing with medical child abuse or,

Speaker 2 I mean, it comes in all sorts of forms, but

Speaker 2 you know, she is an extremely attentive parent, and she sacrificed a lot, a lot of school events, a lot of like school concerts and soccer games and birthday parties and stuff to go look at like the worst thing that you could look at.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 I, you know, we, we certainly had a stable, you know, family income growing up, but like she did that for years without a raise, you know?

Speaker 2 Like there was her salary stayed the same for like, I don't know, a decade? Like, you know, and you would hope that you'd at least get a cost of living raise, you know, in that time.

Speaker 2 But the, just, there's,

Speaker 2 I don't really know what else to say to the claims that there's some financial incentive or like a sick ego incentive, you know, like she'd come back at

Speaker 2 like late at night, just kind of like

Speaker 2 broken sometimes by what she had seen. And like,

Speaker 2 and

Speaker 2 I get that some,

Speaker 2 I get that some people who are affected by this and feel that they've been unfairly, you know,

Speaker 2 identified as

Speaker 2 someone in need of help in how they parent their kids.

Speaker 2 I get that that's a really stressful experience, and that maybe that's like the shortest line you can draw between two points of like, well, this person must have some motivation.

Speaker 2 They must be getting something out of it.

Speaker 2 It lines right up with the like, why are cops giving out speeding tickets? It's like, oh, they must have a quota that they have to hit for the month.

Speaker 2 I mean,

Speaker 2 if

Speaker 2 If that was the motivation, well, she didn't get money out of it.

Speaker 2 She didn't get more time with her kids.

Speaker 2 She sacrificed a lot to

Speaker 2 deal with this topic for decades. And

Speaker 2 if people don't believe that, that's fine.

Speaker 2 But

Speaker 2 maybe they should at least hear somebody in her immediate family say that

Speaker 2 all of us kind of bore a bit of... a sacrifice because of this job when we were growing up and

Speaker 2 I can't change anybody's mind about it, but

Speaker 2 it should be said.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I mean, and I think, you know, I heard from,

Speaker 1 and I'll definitely mention in the episode because

Speaker 1 I asked if I could mention it. I just heard from someone,

Speaker 1 you know, that she has, that she was a lawyer, she's a family court lawyer for years in Pinellas County, and she had really good things to say about your mom.

Speaker 1 And she said, I remembered a whole bunch of times she would testify on behalf of a kid and not charge because, you know, and

Speaker 1 yeah, I mean, and even if it was for some ego thing, it's like, well, your mom wasn't out there seeking press for being this amazing doctor.

Speaker 1 She did not want to be in the press, right? It's like, I don't, I think if someone had those motivations, you would see evidence of them. That's the thing, right?

Speaker 1 Like, there'd be some trail, some paper trail there of, you know, we know it when we see it um

Speaker 1 yeah i mean it's it's i

Speaker 1 my position is that the truth still matters even if people i i know that there's going to be people that discount everything you say everything i say um

Speaker 1 but it's not everyone And there are a lot of people that watch this movie that just have no idea about the facts in this case.

Speaker 1 And I think, you know, you had said this thing earlier about how this broke your brain in terms of experiencing media.

Speaker 1 I think for me, and actually, for the entire team here, as we've made this season and sort of, you know,

Speaker 1 unthreaded everything in this documentary, having all watched it months ago and now poured over the transcript many times,

Speaker 1 when you realize how there's just nothing to it, it's so thin.

Speaker 1 And it sort of made me go, oh my God, like how many podcasts or documentary documentaries or whatever have I consumed and just been like, well, that's true. So it's a true story.

Speaker 1 So this person must have done their due diligence. They must have talked to both sides.
They must have documentation. They must have blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

Speaker 1 And now we realize that's not true.

Speaker 1 You actually can just put something that bears almost no relation to the truth and Netflix will buy it because it's an emotional story that's going to inspire outrage.

Speaker 1 And that is a currency and that is real.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 I don't think

Speaker 1 I just will never look at anything the same way.

Speaker 1 And that part, that part is hard to sort of, you're like, oh,

Speaker 1 it has shifted my worldview.

Speaker 1 You know, but I think it's like, you still have to try, right? You still have to try and get the truth out there. And I think,

Speaker 1 and I think it's so, you know, something that there's like, it's a real setup here with doctors where they can't talk in the media and they can't respond and they can't speak out for themselves so you know we don't we think of doctors as powerful people but actually they're incredibly vulnerable when it comes to this kind of coverage and so i think there are a lot of people that just are swallowing the narrative that they're given much like i'm sure i have it's not just because they're dummies you know or like not capable of critical thinking and i i think that this will mean a lot to people to hear from you so um

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Speaker 1 I just wanted to ask you kind of as like a final question.

Speaker 1 What do you want people, like, what do you most want people to know about your mom?

Speaker 2 I guess I would

Speaker 2 want them to know that

Speaker 2 You know, when you get a family together and you talk about something like this that's happening in your life, you know, we just had Thanksgiving, we all got together and

Speaker 2 wanted to check in on my mom and how she's doing. You know, people get

Speaker 2 animated and they will have a lot to say and they'll say their

Speaker 2 worst,

Speaker 2 you know,

Speaker 2 their least generous ideas if they're angry about the world.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 even in that environment, even like no matter what, like as you said, she

Speaker 2 is,

Speaker 2 she's not bitter at

Speaker 2 the way that this has shook out. I, you know, you can just sort of,

Speaker 2 she hangs her hat on the knowledge that, like, a lot of children are alive because of her.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 I get that one slickly edited film makes it seem like one of those cases is dubious, but like there are so many

Speaker 2 kids that grew up in Palace County that are alive because of her. And

Speaker 2 it's

Speaker 2 really, you know,

Speaker 2 in cases that I

Speaker 2 where they've reached out to her and said as much, you know, I think there's,

Speaker 2 yeah, that doesn't, that doesn't sell as a Netflix movie, but

Speaker 2 even in these close conversations that would never, you know, that would be in, you know, in our, at our kitchen table, I'm kind of stunned that you can't get a

Speaker 2 rise out of her. You can't get like a

Speaker 2 negative thing from her about this.

Speaker 1 She's not going to rant even a couple glasses of wine in at Thanksgiving when most of us would rant about, you know, someone getting a parking ticket, right?

Speaker 2 Yeah, because I think it's, she doesn't see this as

Speaker 2 it's not that she's motivated to do this. It's not that she loves this job, it's that she sees it as something she had to do, right?

Speaker 2 For,

Speaker 2 I get, you know, in her testimony, I think she said that she was interested in it all because after going through a,

Speaker 2 you know, in her

Speaker 2 internship, having some some exposure to this topic. But like,

Speaker 2 it's,

Speaker 2 I think that's why she's so sort of solemn when she does this work, is that she sees it as like sort of a,

Speaker 2 I'm not religious, but like, I think a, you know, a sort of a higher calling to do it.

Speaker 2 Knowing that it's the right thing to do, even if you have to face like a horrible trial.

Speaker 2 you know, I mean that in the sense of the trials of life, not a legal trial.

Speaker 2 But

Speaker 2 yeah, she

Speaker 2 is

Speaker 2 through to her core

Speaker 2 understands why this family has felt the way that they do,

Speaker 2 but that

Speaker 2 it still was the right thing to do.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I mean,

Speaker 1 yeah, I absolutely like,

Speaker 1 I see that in talking to her. And it's really had such,

Speaker 1 it's really had such an effect on me.

Speaker 1 You know, and

Speaker 1 when we talk to like Detective Mike Weber,

Speaker 1 anything even, even for me, you know, like, and again, I'm not comparing my job to hers by any stretch of the imagination, but like

Speaker 1 sometimes you are, sometimes you realize that there is something that needs to be done that you can take on in a way that maybe other people can't.

Speaker 1 And it's not because, like, oh, wow, this is the most fun. It's because

Speaker 1 it feels purposeful and there's a drive to do something where

Speaker 1 you are uniquely sort of made to do it. And I mean, talking to her mom, you know, it sounds like she had a mentor that really saw that in her.

Speaker 1 And, you know, and I mean, that's, that's a powerful thing. And we shouldn't make the cost for doing the right thing so high.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 Well, is there anything else that you want to say while we have you?

Speaker 2 In some ways, I'm really

Speaker 2 thankful for some aspects of all of this happening.

Speaker 2 I

Speaker 2 am so glad that I became aware of this show.

Speaker 2 You know, my mom's career is over in this space.

Speaker 2 She can't contribute to this really important cause anymore as a medical director. But

Speaker 2 this show, I think, is like,

Speaker 2 like,

Speaker 2 there will probably be kids that survive

Speaker 2 because of this.

Speaker 2 So,

Speaker 2 whatever vitriol you all receive, I hope you know that, like, it's

Speaker 2 you're, you know, you're not just doing it for the same reason, but you're having, you're, you're doing it for the same impact.

Speaker 2 Even if it's like, if there's one doctor out there who

Speaker 2 realizes, because they're exposed to the show, like, oh, maybe I should revisit this one case that I'm stumped by, and they realize that it's a potentially fatal,

Speaker 2 you know,

Speaker 2 instance of

Speaker 2 medical child abuse, I mean, that's worth it, right?

Speaker 2 So,

Speaker 2 so thank you all for the work that you're doing.

Speaker 2 I'm glad that I

Speaker 2 became aware of this show.

Speaker 1 I'm I'm a little uh thank you so much for saying that

Speaker 1 and um yeah like I have to say you know I I

Speaker 1 am aware of what the discourse is and you know

Speaker 1 there's some scary people who have it out for your mom and I'm sure I'm gonna hear from a few of them and

Speaker 1 you know when we're walking out of your mom's house I was like

Speaker 1 I'm bring it because like, I've never been so sure I'm on the right side of something.

Speaker 1 And I think it is

Speaker 1 worth it to stand up for your mom and everything she represents in this case. And it's much bigger than this family and your mom and me.
And like, we all understand the impact here.

Speaker 1 And I just like, I am very grateful to have

Speaker 1 had you, you know, to have made the connection with you too. I really, you know, so

Speaker 1 just thank you. I mean, I, I, I'm so grateful that you got in touch and brought your mom, you know, got your mom on the show.

Speaker 1 Like, I know she talked to me because of you, you know, and she said as much. She's like, well, Pat put in a good word for you.
That helped. And I was like, yes, you know, and

Speaker 1 it's, it's like, to me, this is, this is like a once-in-a-lifetime chance to to help right a wrong.

Speaker 1 And I hope as many people,

Speaker 1 I hope if people ever listen to anything on this show, I hope they listen to this. So thank you so much for being with us, Pat.

Speaker 2 Yeah, thanks for having me.

Speaker 2 Yeah, keep up the work.

Speaker 1 Thank you. And we'll be in touch, obviously.
I hope I get to meet you in real life sometime.

Speaker 2 Yeah, that'd be great. Yeah.
I hope so too.

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